


Beginning To See The Light

by nerddowell



Series: Stories From The Dance Hall [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>But now the stars are in your eyes</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I'm beginning to see the light</em>
</p><p> </p><p>A Stucky pre-war/CA:TFA oneshot on the song I'm Beginning To See The Light by Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beginning To See The Light

**Author's Note:**

> (Ella Fitzgerald is my jam, retro music dork that I am. I live for 30s & 40s big band/swing/blues/dance music.)
> 
> So I downloaded three albums (303 songs!) of 30s & 40s big band/dance hall hits, and I decided to start writing Stucky one shots based on them.
> 
> Enjoy!

**BROOKLYN, 1941**  
**SUNRISE**

The alarm shrieks to drag him out of sleep's warm embrace. Bucky runs a hand through his sleep-ruffled hair and rubs his eyes, jaw cracking on a yawn. Steve is still passed out in bed beside him after being kept awake until the small hours by another lengthy coughing fit at midnight. He's been struggling more and more with his breathing and his asthma recently, and Bucky thinks he's probably coming down with another chest infection, which will mean more medication.

He's begun taking preemptive extra shifts at the docks.

Steve mumbles in his sleep and rolls over, burying his face in Bucky's vacated pillow and sighing. His body looks even smaller when they push their beds together like this; he looks like a child, curled up sleeping in the foetal position as he usually does. Bucky peels away a corner of the black paper they've put up over the windows to help block out the sunlight - Steve is a very photosensitive sleeper, and if any trickle of the dawn enters their bedroom, he wakes up - and takes a peek.

Brooklyn is, like Steve, asleep. The sky is still mostly dark - a kind of velvety lavender-grey as dawn breaks and washes it with more vibrant colours like in the watercolour palettes Steve always looks at so longingly in artists' supplies shops' windows. He glances back at Steve, the soft, milky light painting his pale skin a dusty rose, glinting off the halo of blond hair around his head on the pillow, and casting tiny, gossamer-thin shadows over his cheeks from his eyelashes.

His eyes crack open as he rouses. "Buck?" he mumbles, groggy, and Bucky sticks the paper back up and sits on the edge of the bed, running his hand over Steve's hair affectionately. Steve's eyes are dark, almost black in the low light of the room, but for the reflections of the thin shafts of light creeping in around the edges of the paper and through the broken slats of the blinds. The first stars coming out in a night sky, Bucky thinks to himself, and smiles.

"Go back t'sleep, Steve. 'M just goin' to work."

Steve nods sleepily. "H've a good day."

"Yeah, Stevie." Bucky smoothes his hair gently, and Steve makes a contented sound as he wraps himself back up in his blanket nest.  
  


* * *

 **  
BROOKLYN, 1942**  
**MORNING**

Steve knows Sundays are Bucky's favourite days, because he can lie in. Steve himself is up early for church, of course, dressed in one of his better, if equally ill-fitting, suits with his shoes polished as much as he can manage with only spit and a nail brush (boot polish being one of the cutbacks they'd unfortunately had to make this month). Bucky sleeps through his leaving, and only wakes up when he returns from Mass at eleven thirty a.m. and his key turns in the lock and opens the door.

"Evenin', lazybones," Steve teases, as Bucky stumbles into the kitchen in his briefs and an old shirt; Bucky just grins and picks up the kettle to make coffee for them both. Standing at the sink, Brooklyn sunshine streams in through their small, clean (thanks to Bucky, elbow grease, and a pail of soapy water last night) window. His silhouette is outlined on the floor, three times his real size, and lit from all around. Steve beams back.

He loves that sleepy, just-woke-up smile. Bucky has an array of different smiles to employ at any given moment in order to charm, persuade or otherwise engage other people. (Steve only has his awkward little grin and a grimace, and only Bucky and his mother ever get to see the former.) The most often seen is the charming, seductive smile he flashes at girls, his eyebrows raised challengingly and his gaze flirtatious. After that is the wide-open smile of his laugh; then, his soft exasperated-but-fond affectionate smile (reserved almost exclusively for Steve, particularly when having to drag him away from _yet another_ fight).

Steve's favourite smile, however, is like, and unlike, all three at once. It's slow, a twitch in his cheek that pulls his mouth into a sleepy curve, his dimples deepening (especially the left side), and his nose crinkles a tiny fraction, eyes still foggy and heavy-lidded with sleep but at the same time glimmering like polished quartz.

That smile belongs wholly to Steve, and he treasures it.  
  


* * *

**  
NEW YORK, 1943  
** **MIDDAY**

They go for a walk. Strolling around Central Park together, Steve has to almost trot to keep up with Bucky's much longer strides. He subtly slows down, to let his friend catch up, and then finds the pace too lazy and comfortable to change it again.

The path is dappled with sunlight peeking through the trees, dancing over the gravel tracks with the gentle breeze, and Steve looks up, face patterned with lights and shadows. The trees begin to fade away as they leave the wooded avenue and cross to the small clearing they like to sit in when the weather is decent. Steve lays down in his back, warming his cool, pale body in the sun like a lizard, and Bucky lights a cigarette beside him, inhaling deeply.

The sky is a brilliant blue, soft white clouds passing over their heads in fluffy, abstract shapes like Steve's favourite paintings in that new gallery he found last week. He points to them and tries to decide what they look like ( _clouds_ , thinks Bucky - just smudges and marshmallows of white, way above us); Bucky watches him, laughs and smiles and smokes his cigarette. Thinks about his draft papers. Thinks about his orders - about the uniform waiting for him - about the gazette, the training, the plane ready to take him to Europe - thinks about maybe not seeing Steve again.

He forces those thoughts out of his mind, and drags a little shakily on his cigarette, glancing at Steve.

His friend's presence at his side soothes his jangling nerves like a draught of iced water on a summer day. Steve's hair glows in the brilliant sunlight and it flashes off his teeth - off the bright, enthusiastic smile as he takes Bucky's hand and directs him to point at the cloud passing over in that exact moment; two rounded lumps on top, trailing away to a thin, pointed smudge. _Kind of like a heart_ , Bucky thinks, the kind of hearts you get on packs of cards or Valentines when you want to let a dame know she's your best gal. Bucky is looking up at the cloud, but he gets the strangest feeling - sees a quiet glow of blue out of the corner of his eye - that Steve is watching him.

His head turns. Steve has his head up in the clouds again - same as always. It's _not_ disappointment spreading through him.

It's _not._  
  


* * *

**  
GERMANY, 1944  
** **AFTERNOON**

Steve doesn't have to hear the soldiers' heckling to know this isn't working. The sky is grey, overcast, the ground is sloppy with sucking, clayey mud, and the men are fucking miserable. _They aren't the only ones_ , he thinks, staring at the cowl in his hands - what is he doing, prancing around in tights with an entirely useless shield and this stupid mask when just about every other American man is out there fighting the real war? The only war Steve's fighting is against himself - to stop himself from punching something, out of guilt and frustration.

Then Peggy tells him about the 107th. About their capture. And Bucky - the sun, the moon, and all the stars to Steve - is the only thing on his mind. No wonder the sky looked so grey - it's hammering down with rain, of course, but he wouldn't have minded if he'd only seen that one face, that one pair of grey eyes, in the crowd. But would Bucky have wanted to see him, dressed like this - trying to convince him that his misery was worth it for the folks back home? No. Christ knows Steve never envisioned himself contributing to the war effort in this way, never in a million years. This job was made for Bucky - someone charismatic, someone beautiful, someone with an undeniable light to him that was irresistible, like a moth to a flame, drawing you in - 

Someone the opposite of Steve Rogers.

So he storms right to Colonel Phillips' tent and asks about Sergeant James Barnes. Hears the 'killed or captured: MIA' verdict, and refuses to let himself believe anything but the very best. Bucky isn't gone; night hasn't fallen yet. Steve will know if he is dead. The stars won't come out, the moon will be a black hole in the fabric of the sky, and Steve will be a wicked candle, waiting for an extinguished flame.  
  


* * *

**  
THE SWISS ALPS, 1944  
** **EVENING**

Steve flies over the mountains with Carter and Stark (swallowing more than a little jealousy, which is ridiculous, he tells himself sternly), and parachutes down amidst explosions, sparks and flashes of light, expertly evaded by Howard. But that's not what he is concerning himself with; there is a person, one living, breathing fraction of the world who is nevertheless Steve's _whole_ world. His thoughts are a constant, chanting refrain of _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky_ until he finds that claustrophobic, dingy room - hears the name - sees those empty grey eyes.

The moon is hidden behind cloud outside as he crosses, trying to make out the kind of shape Bucky's in. It doesn't look good - weak, strapped down, delirious - but the clouds pass, the moonlight ripples into the room in a river of silver, and Bucky's eyes focus on him. His smile is Steve's favourite - _better_ \- the sweetest smile he's ever seen. A slice of sunlight, brightening his whole face, gleaming in his eyes and flickering in his heart.

Bucky has been kept in the dark, his eyes burning at the bright factory lights outside his dungeon, but as he stays huddled against Steve's side - muscles still too weak to support himself for long - he can feel the warmth radiating from his friend. Steve is so _warm_. His body against Bucky's, holding him up, Steve's eyes on his face and his cheek against Bucky's temple - is _home_ , in one living, breathing person.

The factory is an inferno. Steve is separated from Bucky by a gaping chasm of air and greedy flames. He tries to make Bucky leave - encourages him to go. But Bucky won't. He can't. He's so cold all of a sudden - the flames are roaring him alive, baking him in his soiled shirt and pants; but he's so cold, freezing, because that nostalgic homely warmth is missing from his side, and he's literally staring losing it in the face, in the form of Steve Rogers' self-sacrificial hero complex.

He watches Steve take a running jump; watches him fly, backed with wings of fire; watches the flames ball around him; watches him somehow, miraculously, grab the walkway railing and swing himself, sweaty and sooty but alive, up to Bucky, safe and sound and _home_ in Bucky's arms.  
  


* * *

 **  
GERMANY, 1944**  
**SUNSET**

They drink in the canteen that night, and Agent Carter finds them there, wearing a stunning red dress to match her lips, and Steve is caught. She's the colour of passion, of the heart - and of blood, of danger. Bucky is watching him with pained eyes, nursing his pint; Carter pays him no real attention, and neither does Steve, guilt swirling in his stomach. Bucky's smile is bitter, his eyes dull, and he leaves first; leaves Steve to - whatever he thinks Steve is going to do, probably with or to Agent Carter.

The dying sunlight is fire, flickering tongues of flame behind the mountains, blood red and orange behind their jagged, snow-capped peaks. It blazes on the snow, the shifting of his perspective as he walks making the snow seem to be alight, rolling down the mountains like lava. Agent Carter is talking to him, but he's missing it, thinking about Bucky and his smile in the lab, and then his smile in the canteen.

One like the sun. Sweet, warm, bright on his face; beaming; full of everything Steve had ever been made to feel, flooding into every crevice of his body as though pure light were being poured into him, joy making him almost rise off his feet. Then, one like an eclipse. A trace of that brightness, but empty; a lie of a smile. Steve's heart clenches, and he glances around the fire-capped mountains for those familiar grey eyes, that cocky half-smile; for home in the shape of a human body.

Carter can tell he's distracted, and lets him go, promising to talk properly about whatever it is that Howard wants tomorrow. Steve privately agrees; Howard Stark can wait, forever if needs be. But Bucky Barnes - Bucky Barnes is a constant, desperate urgency in his blood, heart tugging him towards his friend as though joined by fishing line, hook embedded deep in his chest where it can't be dislodged. If it ever could be.

He doesn't want to find out.

He just wants that first smile to break over him, like the sun rising, and he wants to see Bucky's eyes mean it.

* * *

 

 **THE SWISS ALPS, 1944**  
**MIDNIGHT**

The train is racing across Europe, screaming towards Berlin with its precious cargo, the scientist and his drones with their strange blue weapons. None of that matters to Steve Rogers, not now, not ever in this moment, leaning out of the side of the train and feeling the wind whip his hair into his face as he hunches closer to the wall and pleads with his friend.

Bucky is hanging from a slender metal rib, fingers barely managing to hold on, his eyes radiating terror. He repeats Steve's name, trying to swing himself a little closer; the rib cracks, he begins to scream - and finds himself caught, one wrist encompassed by Steve's rough, warm hand. He is pulled up, up, into the train carriage, into the ultimate safety of Steve's grasp. His friend's heart beats frantically beneath his uniform, as fast and frightened as Bucky's own; Steve's hand strokes his hair, his face, his hands, pressing them to his own face as if to convince himself that Bucky is really safe in front of him.

Bucky grips his head gently and brings him down, breathes sunlight into his mouth, and presses their lips together to taste. It bursts over his tongue, warm and gentle and full of light. Steve Rogers was born on the fourth of July, and he tastes like a firework - golden, sparks dancing over Bucky's tongue, and an explosion of joy so bright and loud it drowns out all the rest of the world from Bucky Barnes' senses but the feeling of Steve under his hands, the taste of his mouth, the sound of his breathless sigh.

" _Bucky_..."

"Yeah," he breathes, understanding. Neither has to say it. Looking at each other, blue meets grey; out of the darkness and into the light.  


End file.
